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Blaise Jeannot Andrieux
Blaise Andrieux is a character from the Wild Cards series of books. Blaise is Dr. Tachyon's grandson. Blaise's mother was Gisele Bacourt, Tachyon's illegitimate daughter. He was raised by a terrorist group who taught him to use his mind powers to kill. When Tachyon discovered Blaise's existence during the 1987 WHO Tour, he brought the boy back to New York City to live with him. Blaise rapidly grows into an arrogant and cruel bully who enjoys using his powers to humiliate others. Eventually, he goes 'wild', running free on the streets of New York. He eventually becomes a complete sociopath who revels in the suffering of others, especially his grandfather. History Early childhood (France) Following the destruction of the Four Aces at the hands of HUAC, the alien scientist known as Dr. Tachyon was deported from the United States. This marked the beginning of Tachyon's "lost years" wherein he wandered Europe in a haze of alcohol and self-pity. Deported and kicked around by fearful European governments that didn't want him, the doctor briefly lived a guest of the revolutionary Left in France and was a poster boy for other victims of the capitalist HUAC witch hunt. Tachyon met a nineteen year old girl named Danelle Dorcy in the August of 1950 and, unknown to him, their brief affair produced a daughter, Gisele Bacourt. Receiving a presidential pardon, Tachyon returned to New York, founded his clinic, and became a significant figure among wild card circles. Meanwhile, young Gisele was raised to adulthood by Danelle, who infected the child with revolutionary fervor. Before her death in a gunfight with the bodyguards of a French industrialist, Gisele had married the terrorist François Andrieux and produced a son, Blaise. Grandchild of Dr. Tachyon, the outcrossing of Takisian and human DNA endowed Blaise with enormous mind-control powers, but very limited telepathic senses. Blaise's key limitation was his inability to read a subject's mind, though he could effortlessly manipulate it. Raised as much by "Uncle Claude" (Claude Bonnel, a joker entertainer/terrorist known as le Miroir) as by his father, Blaise grew up surrounded by violence, living on the run, and with very little in the way of formal schooling or discipline. From an early age he employed his considerable mental powers to help commit acts of terrorism with childish enthusiasm and the full encouragement of those around him. A useful tool in Uncle Claude's schemes, Blaise's powers were not derived from the wild card virus, so he did not register when tested at birth (mandatory in France at that time). In the late 1980s, Tachyon participated in a World Health Organization world tour to inspect the medical and social health of Wild Card victims worldwide. While in France, Tachyon reunited with the elderly Danelle, who had aged while Tachyon had not. Bitter and vengeful, she informed Tachyon of his daughter, but crushed his elation by telling him Gisele had died. Later, at the formal reception for the WHO tour at Versailles, Blaise took control of a security agent from somewhere safely out of sight. The guard tried to detonate a bomb, but Tachyon overcame the unseen telepath and foiled the attempt. Puzzled by the powerful mental signature, Tachyon reviewed the government records of all known aces. No telepaths of that level were on record. Initially, Tachyon believed his daughter was alive and using Takisian based telepathy to attack the delegation. Danelle was killed in a drive-by shooting before she could reveal any more, but Tachyon probed her dying mind to learn of his grandson. Through Bonnel, in his capacity as a member of the French Communist Party, a meeting with Francois and Blaise was arranged. Things did not go well and Tachyon was kidnapped. Bonnel blackmailed Tachyon into assisting an attack on the French presidential debate, but was outwitted by the alien. Bonnel and his forces, including Francois Andrieux, were captured. Bonnel had nearly escaped with Blaise, but Tachyon put the child into a telepathy-induced sleep and shot the joker dead. Using the Bonnel as a scapegoat, Tachyon claimed le Miroir was the wild card telepath behind the recent attacks. Using faked documents, Tachyon left France and took Blaise with him. Life with Tachyon (New York) Upon arriving in the United States, Blaise was uncomfortably fitted into Dr. Tachyon's already hectic life. He adapted well to new languages (English and Takisian) and excelled at martial arts, but his powers and lack of a moral compass made it unwise to enroll the boy in public schools. So the young human-alien hybrid passed from one outraged tutor to the next, most presumably quitting after some brush with Blaise's mind-control. Occupied with running the clinic, Tachyon often left Blaise in the care of his sentient ship, Baby, which was immune to the boy's still developing powers and entertained him with tales of his Takisian ancestors. An incidental benefit of this was New York's citizens were also kept safe from Blaise. It was during this time that Blaise first met Durg, a genetically engineered soldier from known as a Morakh. Bred to be immune to telepathic powers, Durg made a convenient babysitter from time to time. Unfortunately, Durg, raised by Tachyon's rivals, had no great love for Tachyon and possibly reinforced Blaise's animosity toward his own grandfather. During this time, Tachyon's deficiencies as a parent became more evident. Harried for time, alternately inattentive and cloyingly affectionate, inconsistent in his teachings, which varied from Takisian-based to more Earth-oriented beliefs, Tachyon engendered a feeling of aristocratic privilege, abhorrence for the mundane, and disgust for the malformed jokers in his already unstable grandson. Dr. Tachyon also unhesitatingly employed corporal punishment with both hands or his belt whenever Blaise misused his powers or, indeed, even suggested he might. All this led to the day upon which the path of Blaise's future hinged. In Atlanta, amid the chaos of the disastrous 1988 Democratic National Convention, Blaise fell into the clutches of a tiny deformed joker known as Ti Malice. Fastening upon its victims by the neck, the parasitic joker could control the host's mind and superhuman abilities through direct stimulation of the pleasure center of the brain. Resembling a mutated fetus, Ti Malice used its "mounts" to partake in a wide range of experiences both sadistic and sensual. Surrounded by Ti Malice's followers, all addicted to the pleasure their master could induce, Blaise (mounted by Ti Malice) was compelled to use his powers upon a centipede-like joker in an orgy of sex and violence. One by one the joker was made to rip off its own limbs. Pleased by his new mount's excited response to the bloody spectacle, Ti Malice instructed his favorite slave, Ezili-je-Rouge, to service him. Blaise's first sexual experience involved mind-control and mindless brutality, a combination that would typify his behavior for the rest of his life. Relationship with Dr. Cody Havero The final catalyst for Blaise's descent into murder and mayhem was in the form of Dr. Cody Havero. The new head of surgery for the Jokertown Clinic, Cody found herself pursued by Dr. Tachyon, whose womanizing was legendary. Despite her resistance, a relationship began to bloom. Tachyon entertained the notion that Blaise might soon have a new family with Cody as a surrogate mother and her son, Chris, for a stepbrother. This happy notion would never come to pass. Increasingly infatuated with Cody, Blaise entertained his own fantasies, ones in which she played the part of lover, not mother. Failing to purchase her affections with a gift of precious stones (acquired from Jube, but assumed by Cody to be stolen), Blaise followed Cody to the Jokertown Clinic and flew into a rage. Surrendering to his own increasingly sociopathic impulses, Blaise seized control of her mind with the intention of raping her only to be interrupted by his grandfather. Unable to overcome each other telepathically, Blaise and Tachyon fell to hand to hand combat. Nose bloodied and his wrist nearly broken, Blaise fled the clinic and would not come back until his revenge plan was in place. He was just fifteen years old. The Shadow Fist Society was taking over New York's underworld, Jokertown was a virtual war zone, and the government was helpless to stop the Fists' newest minions, the jumpers; teenage criminals with the power to exchange bodies with their victims. In this environment Tachyon's grandson would truly come into his own. Leader of the Jumpers (the Rox) Initially, Blaise survived by compelling strangers to provide money, food, and other necessities. Approached by Molly Bolt and the other jumpers, Blaise awed the teenage criminals with a taste of how easily he could control their minds. Swiftly initiated into the jumper gang, he quickly became their leader. Too late to back out, he also learned how Prime (an alias of St. John "Loophole" Latham) bestowed the jumper power - through sexual intercourse. Humiliated, but unable to turn the jumper power against Prime, who had immunity to the jumper power, Blaise vowed Tachyon would wish he had only killed him. Under Blaise's direction, jumper attacks grew increasingly vicious. He terrorized CEO Connie Loeffler through a series of jumps into joker bodies and the Global Fun and Games corporation became a front for the Shadow Fist Society. While squatting in an old theater, drinking and watching the remake of Howard Hawkes' classic movie Thirty Minutes Over Broadway, Blaise fired his revolver into an image of Dr. Tachyon (as played by Dudley Moore) projected onto the big screen. No longer content with controlling others to act as his proxies, the young man graduated to first degree murder, personally shooting minor Shadow Fist operative Leslie Christian point blank in the face. Of course, it wasn't Christian who died, but another victim jumped into his place. Around this time Blaise sprang the teenage murderer Alvin the Chipmunk from jail and had him initiated, mostly because he admired how Alvin had killed his own parents. Blaise also continued to pursue his vendetta against Dr. Tachyon, using the jumpers to replace those around his grandfather and compel them to do horrible, though unspecified, things to themselves and others. Only one victim is mentioned by name; Ira Greenstein, Dr. Tachyon's personal tailor. Tachyon hired wild card detective, Jay "Popinjay" Ackroyd, to locate Blaise, but Jay was only able to trace the runaway's whereabouts to the Rox, where no one in their right mind would go. Revenge Finally, Blaise made his move against Dr. Tachyon. Lured to a romantic rendezvous by a jumper in Cody's body, Tachyon was subdued with a combination of chloroform and Blaise's mind control. Overcoming Tachyon's psychic defenses, Blaise employed his new power to perform a bizarre triple-jump. Tachyon found himself trapped in the body of Kelly Jenkins, a sixteen year old girl, and vice versa. Cheered on by his drunken cronies, Blaise violently beat and raped the now female Tachyon, keeping her on Ellis Island as his prisoner and virtual slave for several months. Bloat, ostensible governor of the Rox and one of Tachyon's few joker supporters, demanded the alien be returned to his rightful body and released. Blaise responded by sending him Polaroid photos of Tachyon/Kelly's violation. Subjecting his grandfather to further mental, physical, and sexual assaults, Blaise unwittingly impregnated Kelly's body, making Tachyon mother-to-be of his own great-granddaughter. Tachyon's embarassing predicament greatly amused Blaise and the jokers who resented the alien scientist as the author of their misery. Imprisoned in a lightless basement cell, half-starved, and carrying his baby, Tachyon finally surrendered to Blaise and called him master. In short order, Blaise had the former womanizer fed, bathed, given maternity clothing, and moved to quarters where he could better observe the progress of her unnatural pregnancy. The victory over his long-hated grandfather seemingly complete, Blaise vowed that once Tachyon gave birth he would impregnate "her" again and again. Unknown to Blaise, other events were in motion that would disrupt his perverted desires. Bloat could communicate with Tachyon through dreams and, due to the one-sided nature of his own mental powers, Blaise was unable to detect it. Also, as Tachyon's pregnancy advanced so did her unborn child's latent psi-abilities; power she tapped into through Takisian mental training. Through intense meditation she constructed crude psychic shields similar to Brain Trust's. Foiling Bloat's first attempt to free Tachyon, Blaise brutally raped her one final time, but Tachyon's shields held long enough to keep Bloat's involvement a secret. Finally, the ace vigilante Black Shadow had targeted the jumpers for extermination and had been keeping Blaise and Kelly (in Tachyon's body) under surveillance for some time. Somewhere late in her second trimester, Tachyon finally escaped captivity, but not her new body or its delicate condition, with Bloat and Black Shadow's help. An attack by National Guard soldiers prevented Blaise from pursuing the unwilling surrogate mother of his child. Indeed, at one point, the fighting was so intense that Blaise fled the island accompanied by Kelly (still trapped in Tachyon's body) and Durg. At Durg's prompting, Blaise set his sights on a new target, the planet Takis. The Abomination (Takis) Decades prior to events upon the Rox, Dr. Tachyon had traveled from Takis to Earth in a living starship with its own mind... the mind of a child. He had even named it "Baby", and its personality had grown somewhat addled after years of imprisonment in a government facility. Still absolutely dedicated to its master, Baby was eventually released back to Dr. Tachyon. Blaise used the ship's blind loyalty to hijack it by having Kelly Ann Jenkins pose as Tachyon. Blaise fled to Takis, leaving Tachyon trapped on Earth in Kelly's pregnant form without any apparent means of pursuit. Blaise could not know Tachyon would contact a representative of the Network (a spacefaring culture reviled by the Takisians) and book passage to his homeworld, where Blaise was planning to carve out a personal empire. Mentally controlling Baby, Blaise landed the sentient ship in House Vayawand territory, Durg's homeland and hereditary rivals of Tachyon's House Ilkazam. With the body of Ilkazam's heir as an offering, Blaise and Durg used Kelly to purchase safe passage. Soon the pair began sowing discord and amassing power. Blaise employed his ability to mind control the once-immune Morakhs to deprive his enemies of bodyguards, and his jumper power to discredit or murder them. Control of Vayawand was complete once Blaise personally executed L'Gura, Rayis (the Takisian equivalent of a king) of Vayawand. Preaching a policy of vaguely socialist reforms and a program of interbreeding with the mindblind serfs, Blaise employed the best soundbites of Earth's greatest speeches (Churchill and FDR are both directly quoted) to set an unstoppable political juggernaut into motion. Revolt swept Takis as Blaise's House Vayawand made military victories, territorial acquisitions, and committed atrocities akin to Earth's Third Reich during the early years of WWII. Amongst the enemy camp Blaise came to be known as the Abomination, the literal embodiment of the lowest epithet in Takisian culture, an unplanned half-breed that should have been aborted rather than allowed to live. Accompanied by the aces Captain Trips and Popinjay, Tachyon eventually defeated his grandson and recovered his male body, but not before he was forced to give birth to Blaise's daughter, Illyana. Though his bid to conquer Takis was unsuccessful, Blaise possessed an immense amount of virtu, that indefinable Takisian quality to flamboyantly succeed or fail on an equally grand scale. Indeed, Tachyon's grandson left an irremovable mark upon all of Takis, introducing modern political concepts such as demogoguery, propaganda, equal rights and class struggle to an alien culture mired in millennea of eugenics, feudalism, and apartheid-like racial segregation. Traits Grandchild of Dr. Tachyon, the outcrossing of Takisian and human DNA endowed Blaise with enormous mind-control powers, but very limited telepathic senses. The key limitation to Blaise's power was his inability to read a subject's mind, though he could effortlessly manipulate it. At the height of his powers Blaise was able to mind control up to twenty or more people at one time and, with practice, discovered he was able to also control the mentally invulnerable Morakhs. Blaise later gained the jumpers' ability to swap bodies and was one of the few jumpers to ever survive a interrupted jump. Appearance Blaise is a Caucasian male with long, straight red hair of a deep rich hue, and eyes a brilliant purple-black. Tall and muscular, he has been described as having "cruel good looks" and shown a fondness for dressing in black, a color typically reserved for common laborers in Takisian society. While on Takis Blaise had several diamonds implanted into his cheeks and brow as was the fashion for Psi-Lords at that time. Personality With limited to non-existent parental controls in his life Blaise was left to test his power with impunity. This gave him an overdeveloped sense of self-worth during childhood and developed into full-blown megalomania in later years. Vindictive and cruel, Blaise reserved his most bitter enmity for his estranged grandfather. Once free of Tachyon's controlling influence, Blaise rarely shirked from new excesses. Though never tried for a single offense, Blaise's crimes ranged from petty misdemeanors to atrocities of war: theft, trespassing, assault, kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder are a few of his many sins. A talented public speaker, Blaise easily manipulated the mindblind masses of Takis by plagiarizing famous politicians from Earth as well as unashamedly selling patent lies, such as being able to extend commoners lives through injections rather than the selective breeding which produced greater longevity amongst the Psi-Lords. Selected Reading * - "Mirrors for the Soul" *Wild Cards V: Down and Dirty *Wild Cards VI: Ace in the Hole *Wild Cards VII: Dead Man's Hand *Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks *Wild Cards VIX: Jokertown Shuffle * Category:Villains Category:Mounts Category:POV characters